Life on the Shelf_20070923

If you happen to visit the library during the last week in September, you will notice something very remarkable. No, it won’t be the fact that people are reading, browsing the collections, or checking out books. Rather, you will notice that one of our book displays is adorned with strips of yellow barricade police tape which says something to the effect of “police line, do not cross.” The reason for this remarkable adornment is to call attention to the actual books on display. The Harry Potter series, Of Mice and Men, The Giver, The Catcher in the Rye, The Lord of the Flies and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are just a few that you’ll find there. These represent just a fraction of the books whose content has been formally challenged by special interest groups who deem the content unacceptable for public consumption and therefore think that such material should be banned.
In setting up this display during the last week of every September, a period referred to in the library world as “Banned Books Week,” we join a host of libraries throughout the country to raise awareness about the constant challenges to intellectual freedom. The celebrated children’s author, Judy Blume, says it best when she writes about the adverse consequences of such challenges: “[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” So, join the rest of the country in celebrating intellectual freedom by reading a “banned” book.

Life on the Shelf_20070910

We had a very respectable turnout for our first-ever, themed book discussion, co-sponsored by the NH Humanities Council! Including the facilitator, we had 15 participants, 2 of whom traveled all the way from the New London/Sunapee area, and yet another from Bedford. In fact, interest generated from the selected title extended even to others who read the book, but did not actually participate in the evening’s discussion. And this was more than we could have hoped for. The book under discussion was "Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City." It was a very novel treatment of a foundational era in Manchester’s history, blending both oral and non-oral accounts into a rich tapestry of history. In addition to being treated to the fascinating insights of the discussion facilitator, Prof. Don Sieker, we were also treated to the first-hand testimony of one of the discussion participants whose father was employed at the Amoskeag mills as a loom machinist before they closed in the mid 30s. Our hope is that next month’s read, The Kinship, by Ernest Hebert, will generate similar interest. Visit our website to learn more about the discussion series and how you can participate.